India’s Microfinance Industry Trying To Scale

Recently, Hyderabad-based SKS Microfinance, the world’s and India’s largest microfinancier listed on India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). This was the first ever microfinance institution (MFI) listing for the Indian market. SKS focuses on providing microfinance products through a group lending model to India’s impoverished women for access to agriculture,

Read Full Article »

Demand For Bandwidth A Boon For Optical Networking

The optical networking sector is on a strong growth curve as the demand for bandwidth continues unabated. Smartphones, tablets, and netbooks have led to a surge in the demand for online video, social networking, and multimedia applications, which in turn consume a lot of bandwidth. Riding high on these trends, optical networking players, JDS Uniphase

Read Full Article »

Electronic Arts Introduces Gaming On Kindle

According to researchers, retail sales of video game equipment and software in the United States fell 10% in August. Hardware sales declined 5% to $282.9 million and software sales fell 14% to $403.5 million. Overall, from January to August 2010, video game sales dropped 8% over the year.

Adobe Looking At Acquisitions

This week Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) reported a strong quarter driven by the strong momentum for its flagship software Creative Suite 5 released in April as well as Omniture and Enterprise products. However, they missed the sales estimate and also gave a weak outlook. Early this month Apple announced that it will be easing restrictions for developing

Read Full Article »

U.S. Housing Market Getting Worse

Housing inventories in many U.S. cities continued to rise for the eighth consecutive month in August, reflecting the downtrend in the housing market. The number of available homes for sale in twenty-six major metropolitan areas at the end of August grew 0.4% over the month. The demand in the industry has fallen significantly on account

Read Full Article »

Latin America Rising Online

According to a recent study by Visa, e-commerce in Latin America and the Caribbean grew 39% over the year to $21.8 billion in 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, e-spending grew 106% in Latin America and the Caribbean, driven by 170% growth in Brazil, 91% growth in Mexico, and 56% growth in Argentina. Within Latin America,

Read Full Article »

Hurd At Oracle: Great Expectations

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) reported strong results last week for a seasonally weak quarter. Early this month, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, recruited his friend and former CEO of HP, Mark Hurd, as a copresident. Hurd will help to manage the recent $7.3 billion acquisition of Sun. Conceivably, Oracle will do many more acquisitions, and Hurd will

Read Full Article »

Will RIM End Up In Microsoft’s Arms?

Last week, Research in Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM) reported strong second quarter results that beat estimates. It maintained its position as the No.2 smartphone vendor, but its market share declined to 17.8% from 19.1% last year. Let’s take a closer look.